We can only TRULY talk around finite things. Otherwise, we are forced to talk about the infinite from within. Thus, there is an element to which it can't be "grasped." And, this goes for logic also, it is a tool to "grasp" truth. Perhaps it is best to just talk about eternity as a continuation without an end. It is a direction. In this way, it is similar to directions such as up, down, left, right. They don't have outer limits, so they are infinite even though we typically use them in a finite way, "10 feet to your left." The reality is, you are arguing something which you have no ability to prove, and every attempt to prove it would render you wrong. If I told you to find the finite limits of the direction left, for example, and you gave an answer, I could immediately respond back with something further. The minute you establish an end, you demonstrate an end which is further away. It is simply a continuation, and the logic isn't so "flawed" as you presume.

It is simply a continuation, and the logic isn't so "flawed" as you presume. — Derrick Huesits

I think the mistake in your reasoning is that you nail down X to what you think it is. Try thinking of it as what you don't think it is. In other words, substitute X for whatever would defeat your argument. There you have it.

The problem I face is that others perceive that whenever I answer yes or no, I must hold the inverse of my conclusion. Thus, if someone asks me if I think God exists and I say yes, then I am automatically precluded from thinking that God does not exist. That is simply not true. Everything and nothing is happening and not happening, everywhere and nowhere, all at once, now, never and forever.

In order to make any sense of anything, you must first stipulate to agree on a premise. Or, as has been argued elsewhere on this board, there must be a "gentlemen's agreement." True as that might be, the burden of proof is upon the proponent and it is a violation of the agreement to argue "self-evidence" or "can't prove a negative." So we just pretend that X is something that helps us make our argument and not the other guy's.

We potentially agree more than you think, but not in the way that you think. I think logic as it stands now is 2 dimensional, and as such you get contradictions when a 3rd dimension logical argument is provided that crosses the same point as the 2 dimensional one. For example, I personally believe in a physical life and a spiritual or "metaphysical" one. Seeing people obsessed with death, dying, killing, suicide, etc. I would say they are "dead" but yet clearly they are alive, so x and ~x simultaneously, but they are two different planes of realities and our two dimensional logic can't handle it.

If non-existence cannot exist, then it exists. If it does exist, then it exists. Either it exists or it does not exist, therefore it exists.

We potentially agree more than you think, — Derrick Huesits

That is, of course, true. Because, by my reasoning (or what some would call a lack thereof) everything is true. And not.

Non-existence can't exist
-so, there must be infinite existence in all directions for all time — Derrick Huesits

You are doing well to corral the fundamental arts beginning with these points. 'Non-existence' as 'Nothing' cannot even be meant, so thus I have put it in single quotes. To flesh out the steps in your scheme, I add explicitly:

Thus, existence is mandatory, period, and so it is a given. and so this fact can never be undone. Thus, we have both a truth and its proof. One cannot later on claim that it was optional.

‘Nothing’, not being able to be, has no productive capability. This, too, is a truth and a proof. One cannot later on claim such as that ‘Nothing’ can divide into positives and negatives, for this capability would be a something and thus one did not truly start with ‘Nothing’.

So, there must be Existence as a continuous partless something with no spacers of ‘Nothing’ present (yes, I am being redundant here)! The Cosmos is indivisible.

To no surprise, science has already identified this Existence. It is the partless fundamental fields of Quantum Field Theory (QFT) that give rise to the elementary particles.

At this level, there is no Time or Space yet; the quantum fields are all atop one another (and can interact with one another).

Recall that Einstein did away with Newton’s supposed absolute and fundamental Space and Time. The notion of them is emergent from the true fundamental quantum fields.

What I am doing here is winnowing away all the previous and wrongly proposed fundamentals… to see what’s left standing.

So then, note too that Faraday got rid of the supposed classical particles being fundamental as spigots of fields and that the same was done for quantum particles in Quantum Mechanics (QM) and its QFT to support the Standard Model (SM) which works to great precision.

-something which exists carries certain attributes: is affected by things, effects things, takes up space and encompasses time — Derrick Huesits

This would be the fundamental quantum fields which ever remain as themselves. They exhaust all Reality, period.

Excitations in these quantum fields are the elementary particles, as quanta of certain discrete stable unit energy levels dictated by the waving nature of the fields. As the fields are everywhere, the particles may then travel anywhere to further combine upwards, which we take as ‘thing’s with ‘parts’.

In truth, while the notion of there being things is useful, it is that these so-call ‘things’ are events and process. The sun is a long event but it is not identical with itself over time. Its semblance is a ‘thing’ to us’

In charged particles, the unit charge level also adds to the strength conferred by the unit quantum strength for stability.

The model of these fields as sums of harmonic oscillators at every point is correct and true in that it shows the nature of the elementary particles. So it is that when adding energy to an electron in an atom that the electron can only jump to certain quantum levels.

-things are separated by things which are not of the same type, so the only thing that could separate existence itself would be nonexistence which cannot exist, thus there must be one undivided existence — Derrick Huesits

This is another truth and a proof, that there is no separation, never, that all is one, indivisible, though not under ‘God’, which ‘God’ needs more definition, but is indeed as itself as a must be as a default condition.

-this undivided existence must carry all the attributes labeled above. These attributes, when defined as being all-encompassing, define all the omni's associated with God: omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. And perpetual change through creativity: omnificent. — Derrick Huesits

The quantum fields are all-encompassing and omnipresent as all there is. They only have whatever power that they can have, which also serves as what they can ‘know’.

They cannot be still, for then not anything would have happened, and so thus we have another truth and proof that there has to be “perpetual change”, meaning that it is continual and that not anything particular can ever remain for even an instant (would be small or else All would pass in just one flash). At any rate, change is constant, but the fundamental quantum fields remain themselves at heart. ‘Stillness’ is out, it gaining single quotes now, such as with its sort of cousin, ‘Nothing’.

-add to this the fact that it must encompass all time: eternal, and you get all the labels attributed to God
-thus, the notion of God can be grasped from a purely logical standpoint. — Derrick Huesits

More truths and proofs, in that ‘Beginnings’ and ‘Ends’ are out now, too, in that the quantum fields have to be eternal, or at least timeless (we can’t as yet tell presentism apart from eternalism).

‘God’ as a kind of a Person with Mind seems to be out, too, for systems of mind emerge at higher levels, and ever have ‘parts’ (events and processes really), and those had to emerge previously.

The quantum fields would be as a God-who-is-not-a-person, as having the labels of fundamental, everywhere, the Ground of Determination (G.O.D), all the power that is, eternal, ungenerated and deathless, the One, the Necessary, etc.

Well done!

Go ahead and form it better, I have run through many different sentences in my mind and any sentence discussing nonexistence in general seems to face a strange language breakdown

That's a pretty strong indication that what you're trying to express is not coherent.

TO the extent that there's anything meaningful to say here, its just tautology and nothing interesting follows from it, certainly none of the religious/theological conclusions you're trying to draw.

Its almost like a sort of Greatest Hits of sloppy philosophy or something: reifying non-existence and trying to say some nonsensical things about it, then concluding on that basis that God exists.

, looks to me like explained.
Maybe it's just that a temporally/spatially "limited" world goes against our intuitions — the principle of sufficient reason.
Apply sufficient reason to everything/anything, and you'll get "something extra" (which is ampliative nonsense, since everything/anything already is all-inclusive), or you get a self-reference, or you delineate the principle (which I think may have my vote at the moment).
After all, the principle of sufficient reason is neither verifiable nor falsifiable (check Watkins' "all-and-some" statements), and since it's easily ampliative metaphysics, some care/suspicion is warranted.

Non-existence can't exist
-so, there must be infinite existence in all directions for all time
-something which exists carries certain attributes: is affected by things, effects things, takes up space and encompasses time — Derrick Huesits

The argument is fallacious on similar grounds as the ontological argument for God is. In fact it is Parmenides all over again. You define something into existence, but it is simply our language that works this way and our language does not decide what exists actually and what does not. The ontological argument is more sophisticated though, because you need all kind of additional assumptions, namely that existing carries certain attributes and that it means to be affected by things etc. Why would that be? Some things are affected vy some things, for instance humans are affected by emotions, and other things are affected by other thing, rock for instance are not affected by emotion. Why cannot there be an entity that is not affecte by anything?

In fact it seems to me that according to your argument God cannot be affected by anything but itself. God is infinite existence. Ininity is all encompassing, ergo God exists as all, so everything that can affect God, is synonimous with God itself.

Quick FYI: using a different account to respond from here, I'm tired of seeing my fat-fingered mistake in my last name with no way to fix it.


Let's just say, it exists.


No arguing about your subjectivity. The real question is, why come on a philosophy forum that deliberates over the truth and say there is no truth assertively as though you have it?


The word "nonexistence" is not coherent, and that is precisely the point. If you prefer I don't use that word, I can argue all the same without it and say existence is infinite. But it eliminates a deliberate reductio-ad-absurdum argument I am using here.


Eternity is the driving force of all infinites. Remove that, and you remove the infinite. Without eternity, space becomes limited, ideas are limited, creative potential is limited. But with eternity they can operate without an end. Thus, eternity isn't on-par with the rest of the infinites, it is a precursor.

No arguing about your subjectivity. The real question is, why come on a philosophy forum that deliberates over the truth and say there is no truth assertively as though you have it? — Derrick Huestis

And therein lies the dilemma I referenced before. My having said there is no truth is automatically transmogrified by you into an understanding that it is my position that there is no truth, when in fact there is.

Side bar: A philosophy forum is the best place to discuss the issue of whether or not logic has a weakness that relies upon a gentlemen's agreement for it's worth.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

It sounds like you got to the end of the road for the physical portion of the argument, the question is if it can make the jump into the metaphysical from here. In the video, the method I used to make the jump was to mention the finite beginning of the universe, the Big Bang. Here we see a certain curiosity in that there are potentially multiple forms of infinites. This is similar to my comment above where I mentioned eternity is the driving force for all other infinites, to include space, ideas, etc. In the case of the universe, with a finite beginning, we need to project a continuation before it, and a continuation that somehow established the laws by which the universe would be run. Now, I realize many of the universe's laws might be logically necessary, but certainly not all, and even to say it is random becomes questionable. Because, how is random generated in the first place? To say it just is because it is isn't an argument.

There is definitely a lot to say here, I'm curious to hear your thoughts before putting too much deliberation here as obviously I'm already convinced this is proof enough but needs proper criticizing to make the link stronger.

It doesn't rely upon a gentleman's agreement, it needs modernizing to make it less simplistic. This project has already led me to see that I should put some effort into improving the logical method as a whole, it doesn't do well when talking about both physical and metaphysical concepts at the same time. I have a another video that demonstrates at least a small portion of this, basically the idea is take what is normally seen as binary and twist it in a third direction--the 3D portion of the logical argument. I'll link it below, a good portion is introduction which you can skip, I get to the good stuff towards the end.

https://youtu.be/SVGVjsJ7JYk

Now you are challenging me to learn. :grin: I don't think I'm up for that. But if the burden of proof lies upon the proponent, and the proponent says that X cannot = -X, then he should have to prove it. If he says that it is self-evident, then he should submit a lessor proof. Any greater proof should have lesser proofs that are not anecdotal. If he says that "you can't prove a negative" then he has stipulated that logic is based upon that which cannot be proven. So, we all just agree that X=X and go on our merry way.

But I was taught that, in order to argue, the participants must first agree on a premise before going forward in disagreement. If one doesn't want to go forward, then don't accept the premise. That is all I've done. I refuse to accept any one's premise and place the burden of proof upon them, where it belongs. I won't accept anecdote and nothing is self-evident.

I've been told I'm full of shit and that may be true, but maybe the modernizing you refer to could dumb it down enough for me. We'll probably never know unless I follow links and proceed down what could be a rabbit hole.

On the other hand, I'm comfortable with X being X and -X at the same time. Many people cannot handle that, and I think that is fine. But I think they will continue to struggle with the divorce between the general and quantum, and the fact that every time they find an answer, a thousand new questions arise, and they seem to be getting further from the truth, rather than closer to it. But I do enjoy watching them struggle. It's like life itself. Cool.

Grass is green and grass is yellow. Grass is not green and grass is not yellow. All of these are true. The reason is because "grass" is a broad category, which can include many states the plant goes through from germination to life to death. But as with anything, the category can be subdivided to make it more specific. Make it specific enough, and the apparent contradictions dissolve. The real question is, do we have the patience for that or do we just want to over-generalize and call it green. The problem here is what I call the knowledge-understanding distinction. Understanding is very open-ended, knowledge is a closed box. People with understanding like you are good at cutting open that box, but all that really does is show the superiority of understanding over knowledge. It does nothing to prove understanding as lacking truth.

Perhaps another way of putting it, you have enough understanding to create problems, but not enough to solve the problems you've created.

If language, philosophy, etc. don't allow for the discussion of absolute nothingness, that says it all right there. — Derrick Huesits

Indeed, it does. But then:

I talk about absolute nothingness as being "smaller than infinitesimal" and existing for a time that is "less than instantaneous." — Derrick Huesits

...so you didn't learn the lesson - you are still talking about it.

I have nothing in my pocket. You think I can take it out and put it on the table to examine. Your posts are literal nonsense.


I've flagged your duel accounts. You had best sort those out with a mod.

I already stated previously I fat-fingered my last name and this was the only way to fix it. This forum doesn't provide a "help and support" link I already tried that. I intended to switch completely except for a mistake with login on a different device. If your intent is to remove this argument/discussion on that basis I think it says it all right there.

That being said, your comments have little to do with philosophy. I advise looking into reductio-ad-absurdum and how it works. The whole intent is to demonstrate certain ideas as absurd, thus negate them. But you must first suppose them to be true. This is philosophy, this is logic, if you don't understand it there is little I can do for you there.

Perhaps another way of putting it, you have enough understanding to create problems, but not enough to solve the problems you've created. — Derrick Huestis

Your first post wanted me to clarify that my position is that grass not grass (and is, too, but you get my point, even if you don't agree with it). But I don't think you were contesting that so much as you were trying to explain that while I might be able to play, I don't have anything of value to offer. I glean as much from you second post, to which I respond here. This post is clearer.

So, I will argue, by saying this (which I have said before, but not to you): I am no physicist and I am not a professional philosopher. However, when I see them struggling, I wonder if they might not want to go back to the drawing board and challenge the very premises they originally agreed to before launching themselves into what they may find a fun, challenging and lucrative endeavor, with plenty of insights and "AHA" moments, but where they nevertheless make their frustrations and chagrins public for simpletons like me to read and consider.

So, while I might not know enough to solve a problem that I did not create but merely pointed out for smarter people than me, I expect them to solve it before concerning myself with their hand-wringing and lost sleep. It reminds me of the guy who beats his horse and expects better performance from the horse.

But that was all really just me arguing. I have, in fact, solved the problem but I don't think they want to hear it. The answer is "A". "A" is all, which necessarily accounts for the absence of itself. A = A and -A. Some people have gone down rabbit holes of a limited number of multi-verses (2, 10, etc.) while other talk of infinite universes and alternative me that are identical, or have one atom reversed, missing, displaced, re-colored or configured and infinite times and blah, blah blah. It's ALL true. And not. Other people call it God. In fact, that brings up another example: people talk about paradox. Well, I'm perfectly comfortable with paradox. God cannot be God if God doesn't want to be God. After all, it's God, right? What kind of pussy-ass God could not be not God if he felt like it? That ain't no God.

Anyway, animals have taught me I am right about this. And not. That does not render me immobile and unable to function because my open mind had my brains fall out. Quite the contrary. I look upon everything with awe and except it for what it is and is not.

I'm rambling. Dinner is ready.

You are very entertaining to argue with, but perhaps not the best person to put a theory through the fire with. Your last post opens many rabbit holes, but perhaps it's best I not jump into them this time...

Non-existence can't exist
— Derrick Huesits
↪T Clark

The physics here is unnecessary. The sentence above is simply not well-formed.
1d — Banno

You seem to be the right person for my question.

Ants exist: Ex(Ax) where Ax = x is an ant

Unicorns don't exist: Ax~(Ux) = ~Ex(Ux) where Ux = x is a unicorn.

How do we translate, "nothing exists" in predicate logic???

Your argument seems confused to me. First, the statement 'nothing exists' does not assert that something - nothing - has existence. Rather, it means that no thing exists. So it denies that existence is a property of anything.

Furthermore, if God exists - and he does - then there can clearly be nothing, for God can do anything and thus God can, if he so chooses, destroy everything, including himself. Thus, if God exists, it is possible for there to be nothing.

Ironically, then, an argument that proves something must exist (as opposed to just showing that something does exist), would disprove God, not prove him.

I had to steer away from "everything" because I did not like the "thing" part of it. Like wise with the word "nothing." Thus, I chose the word "All" which covers both. I also chose words like "cover" or "accounts for" because I did not like the word "includes." The latter denotes something or nothing that is within something or nothing else. And I am not talking about things, or everything or nothing. I'm talking about All. All can be whatever, then some and, of course, not, and everything and nothing in between. It is, quite simply, and complexly, All.

Sorry. I shouldn't have eaten so much.

— Derrick Huestis

So, your theory as far as it goes checks out, the philosophy being confirmed by science, which is really pretty far since it applies to the entire Cosmos, not just the universe!

The forced Existence as Necessity shows that it has to be ever and always, too, which is usually called ‘Eternal’. It is unbreakable and unmakeable.

Eternal pertains to an endless duration of time, while infinite pertains to an endless extent.

If there is presentism, then there is time; otherwise, if there is eternalism, then this is a timeless all-at-once type of eternal. We can’t tell them apart. In eternalism, we traverse an already complex block of past and future, this seeming as time to us. The mode of time has to get resolved, but we can go on to estimate well, I hope, about the supposed Big Bang. We know what comes right after a Big Bang, and it is useful, but I shan’t put it here yet.

Of course, the Bang is a continuation of the Cosmos since something banged. Also, since it happened once, it could happen again. I just hope that it doesn’t happen near me!

Stephen Hawking thinks that there is no boundary at all at the Bang, no before, no outside, etc., but others don’t agree, so I’m putting that in limbo for now.

He’s right, though, about the universe summing to a near-zero balance of opposites (he says zero; I say near) in that the negative potential energy of gravity balances/cancels the positive kinetic energy of stuff. His negative energy of gravity can make stuff for free and the universe is indeed a free lunch… This capability would still have to be a something.

Before the Bang, the quantum fields are still there, since they can never go away, if we continue to look at happenings in time, as we’re used to doing that. The field fluctuations are of a wee and most tiny bit of energy. This so-called zero-point energy rest state is not really zero for physicists. Plus, the rest point for the Higgs field that gives mass to some particles is even of a higher energy!

So, then, for the Bang, perhaps some lightweight stuff accumulated in Eternity’s Waiting Room, there being more and more amounting until a kind of bandwidth saturation point was reached, meaning that an infinite density could not be reached, and so, Boom.

The same for the Block Universe of eternalism if its events became all at once, I guess. I don’t like to guess.

Presentism has grave problems and eternalism has every event of past and future (to us) already there and figured to infinite precision (even the 3 body resists solution; and can there really be infinite precision? And why its specific starting point for the universe?).

As for ‘random’, Anton Zeilinger seems to have shown to 3-sigma that randomness is the bedrock of reality.

Just when we have made great leaps, larger than any before, we see that there is more work to do.

:rofl:

Righto - I'll leave you to it then.

I watched the video and it commits an error right from the beginning with question: Does nonexistence exist?

The presenter argues, fallaciously, that the answer to the above question can't be "yes" because that's, as per the presenter, a contradictio in terminis.

However, nonexistence is a concept and so as a concept, nonexistence does exist. How on earth are we able to talk about it otherwise?

You are an open book with no cover and no pages. Thus, it's not really open, but it is.

You can't; because existence is a secondary predicate.

That's the short answer. Of course there are complications folk can introduce, such as a first-order predicate for existence; but they are odd logical variations that lead to all sorts of complications.

See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/#AntMeiFirOrdVie

What's happening in this area is a search for a parsing of existential statements - especially negative existential statements - that is cogent. That whole area of logic is washed over by both @Derrick Huestis's. To my eye nonexistence is a hollow predicate. So when I say "Ronald MacDonald does not exist" I'm saying something like that he is a fiction, an invention of advertisers, and not a person that you might meet in the street. The issue is how to get this clear.

But apparently this is

little to do with philosophy — Derrick Huestis

So there's that.

I watched the video and it commits an error right from the beginning with question: Does nonexistence exist? — TheMadFool

Yep.

There is getting to be some repetition here which is wearing me out, but for what it's worth this thread has convinced me a different angle of approach might be better. When you say nonexistence is a concept, you're saying it is something which creates a contradiction. The whole word and every use of it creates endless contradictions. The point of this introductory statement was to show the absurdity of it, thus negate the possibility thus we must accept the concept of an infinite existence. Concepts are ultimately things, as I have previously stated, so even when you talk about things that don't exist, all you're saying is they don't exist as a material reality, but they will always exist as a concept.

"Nothing" can be use as a pronoun, adverb, noun, and adjective. Saying "nothing exists" uses it as a noun, so you can't then separate it as "no thing."

Regardless, the first part of this argument should sound confusing because I'm trying to use reductio-ad-absurdum. The whole entire idea of "nonexistence" is quite absurd, and many words have been spilled talking about that reality. But yes, the first part of the argument should sound confused because I talk about it as though it were a possibility, but really it isn't, infinite existence is what we have.